Page:Southern Historical Society Papers volume 34.djvu/337

 Picket? s Charge at Gettysburg. 329

"and well they may be serious if they really know what is in store for them. I have been up yonder where Bearing is, and looked across at the Yankees."

Then he told me a good joke he had on our dashing and debonair chief of artillery. He had ridden out on the skirmish line to get a closer observation of the enemy's position, when a courier galloped up with a message from General Lee. Natur- ally he supposed Mars Robert wished to ask him what he had seen of those people that was worth reporting; but he was woe- fully mistaken. This was all the General had to say: "Major Dearing, I do not approve of young officers needlessly exposing themselves ; your place is with your batteries." While we were talking an order came to move up nearer the artillery. This was done, and the final preparations made for the advance. Here let me say that General Kempef's memory was at fault when he said in his letter to Judge David E. Johnston, dated February 4, 1886, that he and General Garnett were the only officers of Pickett's Division who went into that battle mounted. He himself gave Col. Lewis B. Williams, of the First, permis- sion to keep his horse, as he was too unwell to walk, and after the General was shot down I saw two of his staff, Captain Wil- liam O. Fry and Orderly Walker, still on horseback.

THE TEMPEST AT I C/CLOCK.

Meantime the blazing sun has reached and passed the meri- dian, and the long, painful interval of suspense is swallowed up in the excruciating reality. Where the Third and the greater part of the Seventh lay there was a depression in the ridge, exposing them to the full fury of the tempest of shot and shell which soon came raining down upon them. A faint conception of its indescribable horror may be gathered from a few incidents of which I retain to this day a shuddering recollection. At the sound of the signal guns I went to the centre of the regi- ment in front of the flag, and sat down upon a pile of blankets resembling a coil of rope; but the intolerable heat of the sun quickly drove me back to the shelter of the apple tree, under which men and officers of both regiments were crowded to- gether thick as herring in a barrel, where I managed to squeeze in between Colonel Patton and Colonel Collcote.